


Before the Storm

by witheredsong



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 16:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14877110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witheredsong/pseuds/witheredsong
Summary: "You look in the mirror and see a stranger, and you look in the camera and some hidden hurt part of you reacts to Luca’s gentle demands and Timothee’s strangely changeable eyes as Elio, and your Oliver materializes as a blood-and-bone creation."





	Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> “And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”  
> ― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

He is lounging in bed, watching Jimmy Fallon, waiting for Timmy to come on. Liz is in the bathroom, the water running, taking her night shower, prep step one in her nightly rituals. Over the sound of water, he can hear her singing, and his heart stutters a bit when he realizes she is doing a rendition of “Mystery of love”. On the TV screen, Timmy comes on, lean lanky beanpole, lush curls everywhere, awkward and sweet and joy pouring off him at this new experience, open and beautiful and so raw Armie sometimes wants to embrace him, and hide him somewhere safe, so that loveliness is not tainted by the world, as he fears it will, one day soon. All that vulnerability will be hidden behind the steel armor he glimpsed sometimes on Crema, and now on the tour, as Timmy grows into the man those huge puppy paws promise, as he grows away and apart from Armie. In the bathroom, the water stops running, and Liz steps out in a cloud of steam, face scrubbed and rosy, just as Timmy, all the honeyed naughtiness in his eyes and voice, tells Fallon and the world, “There’s certainly a lot of acting in this movie because if this played out in real life Armie’s wife would be really mad at me.” Liz’s eyes grow round and huge, and her towel slips as she begins to giggle helplessly, as Armie, her husband and father of her two babies, soulmate for over a decade, blushes fire-engine red and hides his face in his hands, with a groaned, “Timmy!”

(The thing is this. Once you’re living your fairytale happily-ever-after, you don’t really expect to meet a new person who captivates you with all the effervescent giddiness of love at first sight, especially if this person is a boy who is a decade and change younger than you, and you’re blindsided by how much you actually like them. Especially if you realize that this kid can act rings around you, and in doing so, is pulling out something so honest and sharp and terrible and great in your own acting, that you’re continually astonished at what you see in the rushes. You look in the mirror and see a stranger, and you look in the camera and some hidden hurt part of you reacts to Luca’s gentle demands and Timothee’s strangely changeable eyes as Elio, and your Oliver materializes as a blood-and-bone creation. You are so lost, so lost. You have difficulty extracting yourself from him on some nights, and have to lean out of the windows of your flat in the blue twilight, smoke cigarettes held in shaking hands, and have to remind yourself not to cross the hallway and knock on your co-star’s door, step into the evening gloom, and hold him close. You are being forged anew, as an actor and as a man, living for Luca’s praises and Timmy’s laughter and the perfume of oranges and jasmine and salt and sunshine heavy in the air.)

Liz comes to Crema, just beginning to show, with Harper and suitcases and his guitar, and her floral perfume and laughter. Her presence, the reality of her, is a splash of cold water, resurfacing after being unmoored for a long time, lost in a dream too beautiful and heart-breaking to let go of. Armie feels as if he can take a full breath after months of not being able to, and his world coalesces to a tangible one apart from the story that Luca has woven like an enchantment around them. Timmy takes a shine to Harper, giving her piggy-back rides and sitting and reading with her and playing with her, and she loves her Timo immediately, refuses to let go of him. Timmy’s reaction to Liz is different, going pink-tinged and shy and delighted in her presence, reverence in his eyes when she takes his hands and leads him in a waltz on the patio of Speranza one evening, as if he has been touched by a goddess and does not know what he did to deserve the honour. He looks at Armie, laughing at Liz’s antics, with those unbearably expressive eyes saying, “Do you know how lucky you are?” It’s only later, much later, that Armie will realize what Timmy’s eyes hid, the “I can’t have you, and I’ll settle for this”, fueled by resignation. Timmy’s capacity for kindness and generosity and love are far too mature for his years. That’s why he embraced Armie’s wife and Armie’s baby girl, because to him, that was an extension of loving Armie, finding an outlet for the feelings he knew he could not act on, and which demanded expression in some small way, clawing at his heart to be let out.

On the day Armie finally has a break from shooting, the sun peeks out from cottony, billowy clouds, and Liz decides he needs to take her around Crema, show her all the hidden nooks and spots that Timmy offered to him in those first few hazy days as they spun around the cobbled streets, intoxicated with new discoveries about the place, about the possibilities Luca and Ivory and Sayombhu seem to be opening up to them with this project, and if he’s being honest with himself, with each other. Liz tries to rope Timmy in, but he shakes his stubborn curls, laughs and says he’d rather spend the day with someone close to his age for a change, as he balances Harper on his waist, her nanny smiling indulgently at the picture they make, her blond hair and his brown tangling, as she lays her small head trustingly on his shoulders. Armie smiles at the picture they make, his baby-girl and his friend, and Liz actually says, “Aww”, coos at them and snaps a picture, then kisses their daughter on the cheek, following up with a kiss for Timmy on his forehead. He blushes furiously. At the sight, Armie is, for a moment, completely lost, overwhelmed. Liz nudges him with her elbow, and he breaks free of his trance, steps into the patch of sunshine where Timmy stands, and puts his arms around him and Harper, swaying them both a little, says, throat suddenly rough, “Be good, you two!” He steps away, or tries to, notices Timmy’s fingers tangle, for a short eternity on his t-shirt, before he let’s go, expression smooth as marble, eyes hidden under all that wild hair, Harper’s tiny fingers curled in at Timmy’s nape. Like father, like daughter, Armie thinks. They both loved Timmy as soon as they saw him.

Armie takes Liz to the berm. Or rather, his brilliant wife somehow leads him to the goddamned place, pulls him down to the bay, gasps and splashes in the cold clear water, soaking herself and him, from head to toe. In the water, it’s easier for her to float weightless, the constant discomfort of the early months of pregnancy, the soreness, the lingering nausea, the skin on her breasts and belly stretching tight, ease away, and she lies, supported by his embrace, a half-submerged mermaid, dark hair spread out over his chest and shoulders like tangled seaweed, cool and silky. He runs his famished hands over the swell of her stomach where their baby son is growing, tastes the brine between her legs, kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, everywhere, as she gasps and moans. This hidden interlude, shaded away from prying eyes by the foliage around, burying himself in her, his refuge, as the sun paints a red glow beneath his closed eyes, the only sound other than them of the water and the susurrus of the leaves. Like an overexposed negative, for one mad moment, he sees another image painted in his traitorous mind - the legs around his waist, the arms around his neck are harder, the warmth of a boy he pretended to love and kissed and held for make-believe, instead of the truest thing in his life, the other half of his heart. He gasps and comes, and beneath him, Liz shakes apart as well – their spend washed away by the flowing water, her tender fingers in his hair, her lips kissing away the salt that leaks from the corner of his eyes, murmuring, “It’s Ok. Shush darling, it’s Ok. I know my love, I know.”

(As they lie in the tall soft grass on the banks, Liz’s head pillowed on his chest, her hands slowly sweeping down his shoulders to the small of his back, counting the knobs of his spine – a thoughtless gesture of comfort and care unnoticed after a million similar caresses, Armie steels himself for the conversation he knows is coming.)


End file.
